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Sony Talks Cheaper Blu-Ray Players

The format war is over, which means we should start seeing cheaper Blu-Ray players. And according to Sony Electronics CEO Stan Glasgow, who spoke to Gizmodo, a $200 player may arrive in 2009. In fact, he also confirmed they'd hit the $300 price point some time this year, which should be good news for everyone who hasn't yet made the leap into the high-def world.

Furthermore, it seems evident that "cheap Chinese-made players" won't be "flooding the market" in order to push the Blu-Ray format, as Glasgow said it would be a "while" before the BDA licenses the technology to them. As for the PS3, he maintains Sony's earlier position that more models are likely: "there's going to be continual evolvement in the PlayStation line." More from the meeting included encouraging statistics for both Sony and the Blu-Ray initiative: firstly, when people were asked what brand they think of when it comes to high-definition, Sony is "far and away the leader" at close to 36%, as opposed to the runner-up, which only secured 10%. About half of Sony's LCD HDTVs sold last year had full 1080p resolution, which of course benefit greatly from Blu-Ray. Oh, and lastly, Sony apparently isn't concerned about a recession.

All in all, ever since the Blu-Ray victory, the news has been saturated with all kinds of pro-Sony stats and numbers. Not exactly surprising, when you think about it.

Comments (3 posts)

Very cool, my father has complained about the costs of bluray players, the lower priced players will appeal to him and others I am sure. He has a 1080p HDTV (I do as well) and bought into HD-DVD, but aside from it being the failed format, most movies had problems playing, and they took a long time to load if they did work. About 3 out of 10 movies work I believe.

I personally tell people just to buy a PS3 if they're going to buy a bluray player. Least they get a fully functional and supported piece of hardware that can do other things.

They will continually have competition. Not only in the optical media market, but in the games market. They have to sell more PS3s in order to get close to the competition. Wii is by far outselling PS3 5--1 or even 6--1 in February...don't know about March but I think the ratio wouldn't change much since there are not heavy-hitting titles coming our for PS3 during March. But there is for the Wii, in NA, SSBB just came out in March.